A health official takes a blood test sample of a duck at Toul Prage village in Kampong Speu province, 60 km (37 miles) west of Phnom Penh, March 31, 2006. Tests have confirmed the H5N1 bird flu virus in dead ducks found near Cambodia's border with Vietnam two weeks ago, a government minister said on Thursday. REUTERS/Chor Sokunthea 
Sun Ra, left, 24, holds his cock fighter at Kampong Speu province's Tuol Prik village, Cambodia, Friday, March 31, 2006. Cambodian officials swept the village Friday to cull poultry after tests found the virulent H5N1 virus among some of the flock. The virus killed a 3-year-old toddler in the village last week. (AP Photo/Heng Sinith)Phnom Penh (dpa) - Cambodia's battle against bird flu is being hampered by angry, distrustful villagers who hide or move poultry to avoid culling, government officials said Saturday.
Villagers in Kampot province are less afraid of the virus than of money lenders and non-governmental organisations that have lent them money to buy poultry, said So Vitthy, the senior Agriculture Ministry official in the province.
About 2,500 ducks have been culled in Kampot in recent weeks in an effort to curb any spread of the feared H5N1 virus after three ducks tested positive on Tuesday, So Vitthy said by telephone.
"We have frozen transport of birds within a three- to five- kilometre radius of the area we detected bird flu last week," he said. "But villagers are angry and scared to lose their stock, so we think they are hiding or moving birds to other areas anyway."
He said very poor villagers often reported that they had not been compensated for stock culled so far by the financially overstretched ministry and were reluctant to cooperate with authorities and face a future with no stock and no means to pay back the loans they had taken out to buy it.
In neighbouring Kampong Speu province, Ministry of Agriculture official Som Lakan said fears were mounting that H5N1 was present but had so far gone undetected due to a lack of education amongst villagers.
"We are continuing to maintain a three-kilometre quarantine zone around Toul Preach village in Kong Pisey district where the little girl died (of H5N1) last week and have banned the transportation of poultry in or out of the area," Som Lakan said by telephone.
"That area is a very dangerous place for H5N1," he said. A cull of birds in Kong Pisey and the neighbouring district was continuing, Som Lakan said.
A three-year-old girl from Kampong Speu's Kong Pisey district became Cambodia's fifth confirmed human victim of the H5N1 virus last week after she apparently played with sick chickens from her family's small flock.
She was the first death outside of the Vietnam-border province of Kampot, which lies next to Kampong Speu.
Authorities say they fear that the virus remains active in the area and could spread through the two southern provinces, resulting in the culling of thousands more birds and possibly leading to more humans being infected.
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